Saturday, 29 June 2013

In the Summer of 1977, Hugh Mundell stopped
in at the Black Ark studio to record two
sides with melodica genius Augustus Pablo in
the producer's chair, 'Why Do Black Man Fuss
& Fight' and today's featured tune, 'Let's
All Unite'. Both cuts were released as
singles and would eventually find their way onto
the following year's LP, 'Africa Must Be
Free By 1983'.

Hugh Mundell wrote his own songs and was
already a remarkably assured artist by 1977,
all the more remarkable when you consider
that at the time of this recording he had
only just turned 15 years of age. A friend,
the toaster Jah Bull, describes Mundell as
'...a very young youth at the time but a
very serious youth. When I say serious I
mean he was like a likkle man, not a likkle
boy.'

In October 1983, Hugh Mundell's house in Kingston was
burgled and while the guilty party was
caught and jailed, the perpetrator's
brother later confronted Mundell on the
street, shooting and killing him.

Thursday, 27 June 2013

It's only Thursday morning and already there
are discussions about the possible contents
of The Rolling Stones setlist at Glastonbury
this coming Saturday. Really? Surely it will
be a crowd pleasing hits set - and why
shouldn't it be? I don't foresee any
Springsteen-style fan requests, magic-markered on pieces of cardboard, being
gathered up by Mick for impromptu consideration. Nor any
odd, painfully obscure, rarities appearing in the running order for the satisfaction (sorry) of
Stones geeks and completists.

All that being said, if the band should unexpectedly lurch into the following tune
on Saturday evening, this correspondent's
ears would certainly prick up.

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

After the ankle returned to full working
order, following my little mishap in April,
I initially restricted myself to walking
only on country lanes and paths - good solid
flat surfaces that presented little risk of
another painful twist. Gradually though,
I've carefully reintroduced a series of
favourite local circular walks that wander
off-road and down along the uneven surfaces
beside the river.

There's one particular spot on the riverbank
that I can't pass without at least pausing
for a moment, though quite often I will
stand there in silent contemplation for
several minutes. It's a very simple outlook
along a straight passage of what otherwise
is a fairly meandering river, but for some
reason it rarely fails to imbue me with a
tremendous sense of well-being. If my camera
is to hand, I'll invariably take a photo in
an attempt to capture the moment - and fail
to completely. For this reason I have
dozens of shots from the same spot. Here's
yesterday evening's effort, not bad, but you
should've been there.

Monday, 24 June 2013

One summer evening in 1982, at the
Hammersmith Odeon in London, I had the great
good fortune to spend some time in the
company of Blues royalty in the form of a
triple headed concert bill that featured B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Bobby 'Blue'
Bland. The three giants played individual
sets, Hooker, beneath a single spotlight, on a
bare stage with just his guitar and
stamping foot for company, while King
fronted a large, gregarious, well-groomed
band, though in truth, it was Bland I was
mainly there to see. I'd recently become
enthralled by a series of his albums from
the 1970's, 'Come Fly With Me', 'His
California Album' and, best of all, 1974's
'Dreamer', thereafter working my way
backwards through his catalogue and
discovering his, often majestic, Duke
recordings of the 1950's and 60's.

At the conclusion of the show back in 1982,
the three legends gathered on stage to
perform a short series of songs together, to
rapturous applause. The highlight of the
evening came a little earlier for me though,
when Bobby Bland led his own modest band
through a terrific reading of 'St James'
Infirmary'. Here, to mark his passing, is his sublime 1961 recording of the
song.

Two more great Bobby 'Blue' Bland tunes are
featured on these fine blogs, here and here.

Friday, 21 June 2013

Denis Jones throws the Dick Van Dyke notion
of a one man band out of the window and is
surely some kind of technical genius,
embellishing his songs with loops, pops,
crackles and beeps created live and in the
moment. Yet for all the inanimate gadgets
and gizmos on display, a resolutely human
heart beats at the core of his songs.

Jones hasn't added to his tally of two long
players since 2010's 'Red + Yellow ='
(available to hear with associated visuals
here), this though, is an absorbing live
reading of 'Beginning', the perversely
titled closing track from his 2007 debut
album 'Humdrum Virtue'.

Thursday, 20 June 2013

Today we heard the terribly sad news that James Gandolfini, star of The Sopranos, one of the greatest TV series to come out of America, has passed away very suddenly at just 51 years of age. This evening i'll drink a glass of red in his honour, but for now I salute him with my morning espresso.

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

I've spent the past couple of days mulling
over just how many superlatives I can get
away with using in a piece on Bruce
Springsteen and the E Street Band's concert
at Wembley Stadium on Saturday. Whatever my
allocation, though, it could never be
enough.

Overcoming a personal antipathy of the
'stadium experience', this was my first
Springsteen show in ten years, my first show
since the band suffered the devastating losses
of Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons and
was a joyous and moving celebration of those
who are gone and those who remain.

We got 'the hits'. We got newer songs, in
vastly superior versions to their recorded
counterparts. We got audience requested fan
favourites. But what those of us lucky
enough to be there will always remember, is
that we got a quite staggering performance
of 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' - the
whole LP, start to finish.

From the many shaky clips of the show
available to view on YouTube, here is the
intense reading of 'Lost in the Flood', an
audience request, originally released on
'Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.',
Springsteen's 1973 debut.

Friday, 14 June 2013

The range of it's catalogue was diverse,
eclectic and downright odd in places (and
I've only scratched the surface over the
past five days), but Lightning Records
greatest commercial successes and critical
acclaim came with their many licensed reggae
releases, usually from the Joe Gibbs stable
and most notably with the Number One hit
'Uptown Top Ranking' by Althea and Donna. So
with that in mind, it's only fitting that I
conclude this little trawl through the
Lightning records in my own collection with
a classic reggae selection.

'Money in My Pocket' by the late Dennis
Brown was originally issued in Jamaica on
Joe Gibbs Music in 1978, before gaining a UK
release on Lightning the following year. I
initially had every intention of posting the
full 12" version, complete with a brilliant
and uncredited toast by Prince Mohammed
(check it out here), but recently came
across this wonderful live vocal performance
from Top of the Pops and instantly knew it
had to be the one. How great is this?

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Day 3 of a haphazard look at singles from my
collection on the Lightning Records label,
finds us in December 1977 with 'Ain't Doin'
Nothin' by Jet Bronx & the Forbidden. It's a
red vinyl 7" that I still notice in charity shops and at car-boot sales from time to time, so I
assume that the 'limited edition' may have
run to substantially more than the 15000
indicated on the sleeve.

The band is a handy one to keep in mind
should you ever find yourself in the
position of putting together a pub quiz, as
their guitarist, and composer of this catchy
little number, is the aforementioned Jet
Bronx, also known as Loyd Grossman - yep,
that Loyd Grossman. I wonder whatever became of that old punk?

Monday, 10 June 2013

Flicking through a box of my old 7" singles
recently, I was surprised to find how many
releases I owned on Lightning Records.
Lightning was a Warner Brothers sponsored
independent label in the late 1970's, with
no uniform profile, releasing novelty
singles, proto-NWOBHM, Rock & Roll reissues
and second division punk alongside cutting
edge reggae from the likes of Culture and
the mighty Prince Far-I.

From Monday to
Friday this week I'll be featuring a single
a day from my box, as originally released on
the Lightning label.
First up is Lucy with 'Really Got Me Goin'',
one of two 1977 singles that form their
entire recorded output. A quick glance at
existing photos of the band tells you a
great deal about the period; unfashionable beards, flares
and long hair rub shoulders with ripped tee-shirts, short back & sides and drainpipes - not to
mention a glammed up bassist with something of a Steve
Priest fixation. It was a confused time! One
gets the distinct impression of a band
caught between two stools, forced by the
changing musical climate to 'punk' their
sound up a bit, resulting in a somewhat
clunky, but enjoyable approximation of the
burgeoning genre .

Guitarist Phil Collen went on to find
fame and fortune with Def Leppard - who'd
have thunk it?

Saturday, 8 June 2013

At the very moment that all the tiny newborn
balls of fluff, flapping and screeching
behind their parents, need it most, we've
once again been forced to severely reduce the
supply of bird food in our garden. The
reason? A very ingenious rat. It stretches,
it jumps, it climbs, it dislodges, it prises
open and it devours. No matter what lengths
we go to to put the feeders in out of the
way and out of reach locations, Mr
Norvegicus outwits us, usually in broad
daylight while we sit just a few feet away
and watch. Why do we just sit and watch?
Because he's actually pretty impressive in
his cunning and guile and also because if we
chase him off, he just waits until we are
safely back indoors before recommencing his
endeavours. He's a clever little thing and
certainly a lot less ugly than the gnarled bruiser
we had in the garden last year.

So, for the time being, we've removed all
but a couple of the bird-feeders, which are
hung from the middle of the washing line for
maximum inaccessibility, in the hope that
our unwanted guest will grow frustrated and
wander off to explore pastures new. He's
just doing his thing, I certainly don't want
to kill him, merely dissuade him and reduce
the risk of him getting into the house if we
happen to leave the back door ajar.

Thursday, 6 June 2013

Earle Mankey was guitarist with the pre-'Kimono My House' Sparks, but in 1973, when
Ron and Russell relocated to the UK, Mankey
stayed in LA and began a long career in
record production that continues to this
day. Along the way he's twiddled the knobs
for such artists as The Long Ryders, The
Three O'Clock, The Dickies and Concrete
Blonde, in addition to engineering albums by
Elton John and The Beach Boys.

Mankey the performer has reappeared only
sporadically since the Sparks days, one 7"
single, 'Mau Mau', on Bronze Records in 1978 and two mini-albums in the 1980's being the sum total of
his output. Look out for a copy of 'Mau Mau'
on your travels, it's a good tune, but not
as good as the brilliant 'Crazy' on the
flipside.

Monday, 3 June 2013

I appeared in a few, inevitably
shambolic, infant school nativity plays when I was very young, but
Christmas 1969 was the real beginning of my
glittering showbiz career. I played the
snowman in the school production of, erm,
The Snowman - no, not that one. This little
play was, I believe, cooked up by one of the
teachers, though it no doubt shared some of
the values and themes of Raymond Briggs'
1978 book and subsequent 1982 film, albeit
minus all the flying and the dulcet tones of
Aled Jones. After this, I went on
to feature in many a future school
play and also joined some pals in the local amateur dramatic society (though we all called it the drama club).

In 1973, the drama teachers were preparing
one the school's occasional variety shows
and were looking for a musical item to slot
between two spoken word pieces. My mates and
I, having not a musical bone between the
four of us, got together and suggested we
mime to a pop hit of the day, the original
choice being '20th Century Boy' by T.Rex,
with yours truly as Marc Bolan. As T.Rex
were something of a one-man-band, performance
wise, we gradually came round to the idea of
The Sweet as an altogether more colourful
proposition.

'At 13 they were fooling....'

My memory is that the show ran to three
performances. One to the rest of the school,
one for the parents and a third that was open
to the general public. Me and my pals,
dressed up to the nines, myself in the Steve
Priest role wielding a mock bass made in
woodwork, mimed to 'Hell Raiser' and, well,
not to put too finer point on it, we went
down a storm! So successful were we, that
for every show, play and pantomime at school
and the drama club over
the next 2½ years, we were invited to
reprise our little act, which we did, to
often memorable effect.

Between 1973 and 1975, in addition to 'Hell
Raiser' we mimed to 'Blockbuster', 'Ballroom
Blitz', The Six Teens', 'Burn on the Flame'
(when a teacher played the wrong backing
tape!) and 'Turn it Down'. The best of the
lot, though, was 'Teenage Rampage', which we
performed for five consecutive nights as a
musical interlude in a pantomime in 1974,
the audience noise behind the song providing a great fake atmosphere.

(Here I am in full-on dramatic guise in a play written by myself and three friends. In this scene, bitten by something unknown, I had turned into a werewolf and proceeded to kill everyone in grisly fashion, wasting lashings of fake blood in the process. Good, wholesome, family entertainment folks!)

In addition to my ridiculously heavy, solid
wood bass, we also made two microphone
stands (one held together by gaffa tape so
that our 'Brian Connolly' could 'break' it
over his knee, rock vocalist style) and some
fake drums, all of which seemed convincing
to us at the time, but in retrospect looked
exactly as you would expect them to, made by a bunch of 13 year-olds in their woodwork classes!

For each successive show I (with help from Mum) tried to find more and more garish and outlandish clothes to wear, which were invariably complimented on the night by the make-up department going to town on my face with ever increasing relish, with the result that I often looked less Steve Priest and more Alice Cooper. As well as performing these little fake musical excursions, the boys in 'the band' also had roles in all the productions, so they were busy nights for us, after full days at school. On more than one occasion I walked home, exhausted, through the streets of Walthamstow in full Steve Priest costume - what was I thinking?

Are you ready Steve?

'Sweet Drama', as we were imaginatively
christened by one of the teachers, came to
an end in 1975 when my family moved out of
London. Myself and my chums were all getting
into prog by then and would have quite
happily performed as 'ELP Drama' if anyone
had asked, but after one last 'Turn It Down'
we were done, as indeed was my youthful
foray into the dramatic arts. I never
stepped on a stage again.

Saturday, 1 June 2013

Frustrating though it is to have a ever increasing list of blog-posted tunes and iPlayer radio programmes awaiting my attention while my laptop's speakers are out of action, it is proving great fun to poke about in boxes of records and CD's that have remained unopened and inaccessible for over 2 years. My attention is currently focused on a couple of boxes of 7" singles - and what treasures I'm rediscovering! I'm supposed to be thinning the collection out, but, as you can imagine, there ain't a lot of that goin' on!

Here's the quite wonderful debut single by Plush, 'Three Quarters Blind Eyes', released in 1994.